‘Hey, Francis! Welcome to Yab-Yum. Do you want to have a swim? The water here is from the hot springs that run from Tassajara to Esalen, so it’s totally natural.’

‘I didn’t bring my bathing suit,’ said Francis lamely.

‘I’m shocked,’ said Hope, catching her breath. ‘I’ll avert my eyes.’

She laughed carelessly and arched back into the water until she was lying flat, her arms and legs spread out, as if she were on a yoga mat.

Gosh, okay, I see, thought Francis. Right.

It was not quite the ecological summit he had imagined, but then ecology was really about relationships, about seeing life not in isolated fragments but as parts of a deeply interdependent continuum and so there was, in a sense, something profoundly appropriate, as well as extremely embarrassing, about walking down to the lower deck, peeling off his clothes and wading into the sulphurous pool, in order to discuss how to get the land back to a wild and natural state.

‘Yes, it is warm,’ Francis commented, as he submerged his body hastily into the slightly steaming water.

‘Hmmm,’ said Hope, ‘it’s so relaxing. We have a tank to cool it down, otherwise it’s just too hot.’

She swam slowly but resolutely towards him, paused and looked at him fixedly before drifting closer. She reminded him of a lioness stalking through the lion-coloured grass, while he felt like the antelope that suddenly sees the grass break into a run.

‘Do you ever see mountain lions around these parts?’ he asked, grasping at the local fauna, like a man grasping at a hanging branch as a river sweeps him towards the smooth lip of a waterfall.

‘No,’ said Hope. ‘I would love to see one, but they’re so shy and elusive.’

‘Probably not that shy,’ said Francis, ‘from the point of view of a buck with a cougar hanging from its throat.’

‘I guess not,’ said Hope, stopping again about two feet away from him. ‘After the Basin Complex fire, when the deer were driven away, a lion came down from the mountains and ate quite a lot of the local pets.’

‘How did you feel about that?’

‘I’m on the side of the wild,’ said Hope, glancing down through the narrow patch of water that now separated them.

‘Looks like you are as well,’ she added, resting a hand on Francis’s shoulder.

‘Well, “inevitable” is probably a better word than “wild”,’ said Francis, ‘to describe my body’s response to being in a warm pool with a beautiful naked woman, but sometimes physiology and morality have to be separated.’

‘Ouch,’ said Hope, ‘that sounds painful.’

‘It is,’ Francis admitted.

‘Aren’t you into polyamory?’

‘Well, if I were, it would be unilateral polyamory and there are other words for that, like “betrayal”, which rob it of some of its ideological glamour.’

‘It’s only betrayal if you’ve taken monogamous vows,’ said Hope. ‘Have you done that?’